The Broken Man Inside
by poetrygirl22
Summary: 'And Porthos puts up a mask. Hides behind the jokes, the laughs. And after a while, on a good day, he feels like that man. He feels strong, sure. He feels like the Musketeer everyone knows him as. But sometimes, he feels so lonely behind that mask. He doesn't have all too many flings, because if they began to love him, they might see the man inside.'


**I don't own anything Musketeer related (apart from the box set).**

**This took me quite a while to write.**

**Please review.**

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**The Broken Man Inside**

They all have nightmares.

They all wake up sweating and screaming.

They all go to sleep with a sense of foreboding, knowing a night terror was just on the edge of their minds, ready to pounce.

Athos dreams of a beautiful woman standing before a noose. He dreams of her last words, her last act. He dreams of heat and smoke, and the cold blade held against his throat. Of a young man with a bloodstained shirt, cold in his arms.

Aramis dreams of Savoy. Of waking up in a cold forest surrounded by dead bodies. Of the people, the lively faces, who lay dead. He dreams of their funerals, go the families sobbing. Of their looks that spoke more than they would ever dream of telling, the looks that asked why is was him who got to live. When their father, husband, brother, son, had died.

D'Artagnan dreams of gunpowder and explosions of red, roaring fire. He dreams of the feeling of rope cutting into his arms, of the helplessness that came when he thought that both he and his King would die.

Porthos dreams of his childhood.

And he'll never tell them of his own hell. He's there to help them, to wake them up, put them back to sleep. To creep between their rooms when their sobbing can be heard. To tell them it'll all be okay, he's there. And all the time he breaking inside. And he needs them, desperately needs them, to pat him on the back and tell him that it'll all be fine. He needs them to tell him not to worry, to talk to him when he's lost in the darkness, to help pull him out, like he does to them. To talk all the night terrors away. He needs them to know. But there's no one there. They're all battling their own demons, believing that they're alone. They're taking too much effort keeping themselves out of despair to even consider lending him a hand. To occupied with their own battles to even notice him slipping into the shadows of his own mind.

And he puts up a mask. Hides behind the jokes, the laughs. And after a while, on a good day, he feels like that man. He feels strong, sure. He feels like the Musketeer everyone knows him as. But sometimes, he feels so lonely behind that mask of humour. He doesn't have all to many flings, because if they began to love him, they might see the man inside. The man who bleeds, the man who cries. And he doesn't drink all that much, because he's scared that the mask will slip, and everyone would know. They would know he isn't strong, they would know he feels helpless. They'd see the man that he buries every morning. And then there would be no going back.

So he hides. He fills himself with the task at hand, fills himself with the love and reassurance that his brotherhood gives him. He works on his swordsmanship, on his shooting. Gradually, slowly, tries to fill the void in his heart. He suffers on. And they look at him, the noblemen, his brothers, his captain, and they all make their assumptions. They all think that they know him. That he's Porthos, that what you see is what you get. He's blunt and gets the job done. That's the Porthos they know. And that's the Porthos he tries to be. And it doesn't matter that he falls apart every night, it doesn't matter that every time he has to dry his tears, every time he has to get up and pretend to be blind to the horror surrounding him. But he never 'gets over it', can never 'move on'. He suffers by himself, and he never stops suffering.

Because the others wake up and walk out, knowing that they have brothers by their side. And their grief stays with them, but it a shadow that can be ignored. They could forget, just for an hour, just for a day. D'Artagnan walks out knowing he survived, that he got saved in the end.

But it isn't the same for Porthos. He wakes up and goes outside, and can see the Red Guards walking just outside the Garrison. He goes on a patrol and sees children, starving, cold and helpless, laying in the gutter. He goes out on missions and sees great barns full of people labouring for hours on end without breaks, food or water. He sees them being beaten till they bleed, and lie unconscious on the floor. He sees young children, their eyes wide, and filled with more pain than you can imagine. He sees the raw cuts on their skin, the silent tears on their faces, and can't do anything about it. All because of the colour of their skin. He meets the cruel slave drivers, who believe that people's lives are cargo, commodities. Who don't even care about the lives they're ruining, only about the profit in their purses. He sees spoilt children of nobles, who have been taught to turn their nose up at slave children purely because they don't look the same.

He sees all that, and can't do anything about it. Because it isn't against the law. Slavery is legal. It's illegal to kill someone on the streets. The punishment for that is hanging. Yet it's legal to kill hundreds of men, women, children, from starvation or disease. From the infection caused by the injuries they inflict. If a beggar was to kill another man, he would hang for it. Yet if a respectable man, a man of 'noble blood' were to kill a slave right there, in the middle of the street, with a hundred people as witness, he would be respected more. He would be praised for being strong and forceful, told he was deserving of his wealth. It would be the slave's fault in the mind of the people. And the man would become a hero for killing a defenceless innocent. He would drink from silver goblets, eat from solid gold plates. And somewhere in Africa the family of the slave he murdered would be crying. But they'd still have that fragile, broken hope that they'd see them again. A hope Porthos knew so well.

His nightmares weren't just of the past, he couldn't move on. Because his worst, most crippling terrors of the night surrounded him every day, so ingrained into his being there's no escape. And even when he's celebrating, even when he's surrounded by his friends, even when you can't tell the strong, brave soldier in front of you used to be a starving orphan, even when his past seems a million miles away. Even then, there are still orphans starving on the cold streets, still crippled men unable to stand. Still poor girls forced to sell their bodies to feed their families.

There are still children growing up among the dirt and the darkness of the Court de Miracles. There are still innocent people dying needlessly in a forgotten gutter in the centre of Paris purely because no one cares enough to give them the penny that they need to feed their families.

He doesn't dream of awaking in a field full of dead comrades. He doesn't dream of a once brother dieting in his arms.

He doesn't dream of ropes around his wrists tying him to five hundred pounds of gunpowder. He doesn't dream of sword fights and dimly lit tunnels.

He doesn't dream of a woman holding a bundle of forget-me-nots. He doesn't dream of a brother dying in his arms.

He dreams of the feeling of absolute hopelessness as another brother, sister, friend, slips away into the unknown. Of laying their cold body on the street, not even able to afford a funeral. To watch as thieves steal everything of value of him, every shed of respect gone.

He dreams of tiny hands tracing his mother's soft face. Tracing the scars that were half faded in the dim light. Feeling the scar from the whip that went diagonal across her face, the way the rings of the slave driver had cut into her forehead as his fist met her face. He dreams of the way her tears flowed down her cheeks, and the way she told him she would always love him. That she'd look down from the land above. That she would watch over him no matter what happened. And he dreams of the fragile, tragic smile on her lips, a smile that told of the end of great pain. Then the light went out of her, and her warm body went limp beneath him. He dreamed of curling up on her still warm body, begging and crying for mummy to come back. Of the calloused hands that tried to pull him away. And he dreamed of the way the body beneath him became cold and stiff, the way her face lost it's tender softness, becoming like chiseled stone. And the way, as he was pulled off her by uncaring, rough hands, he felt truly and utterly alone. Alone and afraid.

He dreams of the cold bite of the wind as it rakes across his exposed skin, the way his fingers are so cold, too cold. The way the people sneered as he walked along the streets, the way the rich turned their nose up at him. The way they didn't think he was human because his skin was a few shades darker. The way the Red Guards would sneer and kick out, and the feeling of a steel-toed boot digging into your bruised ribs. The way they'd pluck you off the street and throw you in a cell, purely because they knew you were descended from a slave. So you must be a thief. You must deserve everything you got because you weren't the same as them. And it didn't matter that these people were children, because their skin was a few shades darker.

He dreams of the feeling of manacles digging into his wrists and ankles. Of a Red Guard pulling him up and out, into the blinding sunlight. Of the chafing ropes around his wrists, meaning he can't move from the mast he is tied to. And if he squints hard enough he can see familiar faces in the crowd. His shirt is removed by cruel, uncaring hands. And then the agony returns. Every night, it burns through his back, and goes on and on and on. His blood splashes on the cobblestones and he still carries on the cruel whipping. Then fifty lashes come and pass and still he carries on. Then Porthos slips into unconsciousness, so the Guard stops. He stops because it's no fun if you can't hear their screams, no fun if they don't beg and cry and weep.

He dreams of the unclean bandages that are wrapped not quite tight enough around him, of the scars that never leave him. The marks of the horror he went through. He dreams of the dirt that clung to you no matter what you did, a constant reminder of where you come from and where you live. He dreams of the crackle of a fire that was once controlled, feels the heat as it climbs up around you. Feels the flames blackening his flesh, the smoke flooding into his lungs, making him cough. He hears the desperate screams of children, the heartbroken sobs of mothers who's children were caught in the blaze.

His dreams never leave him. They surround him, suffocating him. Stopping him from getting clean air into his lungs. Stopping him from ever moving on. Because they surround him, people going through the same dark, dingy hell he grew up in everyday. He hears the maids gossip about a fire that took so many lives, just like one could have taken his.

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And one day, Aramis finds his scars. And he learns of what goes on in his head each night. And then he accompanies him to his room with a bottle of ale in his hand. And he doesn't give the barmaid a second glance. And they talk, and they drink, and Porthos speaks of the things he was ashamed to put into words. And they work through it, the two of them. And Aramis finds the shattered pieces of his heart, and manages to stick them back together again. They talk through the night.

And in the morning he's still there, guarding him from the icy fingers of despair. The other's needn't find out, needn't know about the man behind the mask. They needn't know how he bled.

Now it's different. The mask is long gone, and the smiles are true. He doesn't guard himself from love, doesn't fear tipping over the edge. He is strong. He is brave. He is alive.

He is Porthos.

And he shouldn't be ashamed.


End file.
